Friday, November 10, 2006

Do you wan to learn what "heartland" means? Take a look at this. Turns out that counting ballots in the disputed Ohio 15th Congressional District will be put on hold until after... wait for it... a football game. Another red-blue contest (Wolverines v. Buckeyes - referring to uniform colors, of course).

I never full understood RBR's love for college ball until last weekend when I was in Wisconsin. The Badgers played Penn State, beating them and earning themselves a 6-0 record at home. I walked out of work around 11 am and heard this odd roar. I realized it was coming from the stadium. Then at 3 pm, I walked out and realized that in my black coat, I stood out. Everyone was in red and white. Even the hotel was decorated in red and white. And rooms were so scarce, I paid $152 a night for a BEST WESTERN. HELLO!

I no longer under-estimate the power of big 10 football. It's nice in a way. Other things should stop from time to time for other events. We can wait. I think we here in CA loose our perspective because we don't ever really have a sense of pause, of occasion. We think everything has to be done now! When did that happen to us?

OK, now that that's taken care of...the real scandal is that the football game doesn't take place until the 18th so they are basically admitting they can't get it done in two weeks. That's simply absurd.

Another wrinkle, most of the outstanding ballots came from Ohio State campus area princints where thousands of students were incorrectly given provisional ballots because their DL's didn't match their registration (even when the students provided acceptable alternatives such as utility bills). This could be another Republican plot to disinfranchize the Ohio State students and hope that by the time the Ohio State-Michigan game is over, they will have fogotten all about it.

The greatest thing about American sports is that it is not (like European sports with their national teams) a massively jingoistic and nationalistic experience. It's all about local rivalries that even the most devout concede are a bit silly and absurd (RBR, for example, not actually believe that the Univ. of Michigan is inherently evil, incapable of producing decent scholarship, or comprised of untermenschen who should be exterminated. Nor would he refuse to hire someone or be friends with someone based on a UM affiliation. It's not prejudice or racism, it's rivalry).

In fact, one of the great success of American sports is its non-tribalism. The only requirement for being a fan is the equivalent of the Shahada (sp?) - the declaration of faith in a team (e.g., there is no football team but OSU, and Woody Hayes is its prophet). No blood ties are required.

A recent book called "How Soccer Explains the World" is a great tour of the way in which sports outside the USA is often a surrogate battlefield for ethnic and religious hatred. Which is surprising to Americans, who don't really need a surrogate...

I spent this Northern Summer in Australia during the height of their "footy" season, and I was struck by the power of local sports rivalries to unite a city.

The Australian Football League originated in the state of Victoria and about half the teams are still from the Melbourne area. Imagine Santa Monica, Venice, Culver City, Beverly Hills, etc. all having their own teams--but only having a couple of major stadiums in which to play. Double home-games are very common.

The clubs that play are still small enough that there are legacy players: a man can get a berth on a team if his father played on it. Despite this, it is not "tribal" in the blood-sense LTG uses the word.

Much like American sports, to be a fan you just need to wear the appropriate shirt, hat, or scarf (usually scarf--it IS wintertime when they play most of their games) Emotions ran as high as anywhere but the fans of opposing teams were not separated. Those who "barracked" for opposing teams sat right next to each other. Sometimes even shouted at each other over their fish n' chips, white wine, and espresso (it IS Melbourne, after all.)

The pride in their city and their sport was as strong as their pride in their local team. It made for a good-natured, lively bunch of fans. It was nice to see a people who naturally understood that the rival team's fans were both friends and enemies at once. Slightly more complex than here, or Europe, perhaps?

On a serious note. I'm told by contacts in the OH-15 district that the reason for the delay is that the law requires a delay before provisional ballots can be counted or something like that. The delay would mean that the earliest they could count the ballots anyway would be the weekend of the game. So it's not what I feared - that they were delaying far longer than needed.

To follow up on Dr S's post, the Australian Football League is the "preferential-voting" sporting alternative. A mate of mine and I go to the Richmond Tigers v. Melbourne Demons match every year. I go for Melbourne even though I live in Richmond.

The tribal nature can translate though. We had a lot of problems with crowd violence associated with soccer, because the teams in one city might have Croatian or Serbian affiliations for example. This was only avoided by revamping the whole competition.

In Columbus there are two suburbs with strong ethnic affiliations. Bexley is known for having a large Jewish community. Dublin is known for having a lot of Irish (I don't think Dublin is THAT Irish anymore). Anway, one time many years ago, Bexley played at Dublin in basketball and the Dublin kids threw begels at the Bexley kids. A few weeks later Dublin came to play at Bexley and the Bexeley kids threw raw potatoes at the Dublin kids. After thinking about this for a while, I decided I'd rather get hit with a begel. (for the record, I lived in Upper Arlington which was bigger than either of these schools and so didn't play them in sports)

I am not surprised to learn that Australians sports has much in common with American sports, given a common history of isolation, among other things. I wrote in broad strokes, but hope that the point is still there. I'm not going to argue, either, that some people still get carried away. But Americans do not channel their ethnic and racial hatreds through sports, by and large. We have, um, other outlets.

Molly Ivins wrote a wonderful column about sports being an agent of integration in the South, which contained the following story. A high school football team had its first black player, and was in a game with a mostly all-black high school. When the lone black kid was rather brutally tackled by a member of the opposing team, the story goes that some aging booster stood up in the stands and shouted, "Come on, ref! Get that n***** off our colored boy!" Ahh, progress...